2019年5月4日、ご寄附者のひとりで府中市在住の中野一孝さんにご招待いただき、シュクルはロドリグとゴドフリー・ハンプワイエ博士と共に府中市のくらやみ祭に参加しました。お祭り体験に関する詳しい記事はこちらをご覧ください。

シュクルはこれまでに学んだ日本語で中野さんたちと話しながら、お祭りの雰囲気を楽しんでくれました。本人による体験記をご覧ください。

展示されていたおみこしの前で

Kurayami Festival took place May 3rd to 5th, 2019 at Tokyo, Fuchu City. I attended the festival on May 4 on the second day of the festival. I was with Icishatse Elie Rodrigue from Burundi and Godfrey Hampwaye from Zambia. Also, I was together with three Japanese, Midorikawa-san from African Studies Center - TUFS and Nakano-san together with his sister. Before we went to the shrine, were given the costumes for the festival by Nakano-san for free and it was a gift too.

At first, we went to the shrine for sightseeing and see how people pray. On the road goes to shrine, there were a lot of street shops, where people sold different things especially food staff and many people were buying. It was so crowded.

After we came from the shrine, we waited around two hours for the main event to take place, which was kind of parade. There were different groups which were doing different drum performances. The main purpose of drum performance was to purify the roads where the portable shrines are carried. The different groups were having different drum melody, dressing code in term of color and dance. It was really nice to see and hear the different melodies from different groups.

Also apart from Japanese people, there were other foreigners who come to see the festival and there was someone from city hall in charge of the foreign tourists who was explaining about the festival in English. I like how they provided the Brochures in English to help the foreigners to understand about the Kurayami Festival. The most thing I like is the idea of taking gods from the shrine for one night rest. It was new to me but at the same time surprising as a foreigner.

In general, the Kurayami Festival was a really nice experience for me. In the essence of learning about Japanese traditional culture. Again, I like how the young Japanese participated in the festival, this showed me that even if this Kurayami Festival is an old traditional practice of Japanese but still in this modern days is still very important to Japanese people regardless the age. I really, I appreciate how the old Japanese people integrated the Japenese Youth in performing the different rituals in this festival and shows that there is long sustainability for Kurayami Festival. This is good to keep for the country's history.
I would like to finish this report by thanking everyone who contributed something so that I was able to attend the Kurayami Festival. Especially thanks to Nakano-san for his invitation and support. It was a great moment for me in term of learning but at the same time having fun.